Both of Us (3 page)

Lee is not happy. He has a right to be sore. Farrah telephones and says he’s been talking to her from Montreal and that he’s clearly upset she went to a party with me. He doesn’t deny telling me to call Farrah. He just didn’t think I’d go out with her. Later he relents and admits that he did suggest I take her out but that he didn’t think I’d actually do it. Who
wouldn’t
go out with her? I feel like flying with her to the moon, to borrow a lyric patented by Sinatra. All
this turmoil makes her sad and slightly hopeless. I’m ready to call him myself. She wants to wait for a decent and delicate way to confirm that the marriage is over, but I doubt that’s possible. That part of her life has become disheartening. When she’s with me, she’s a different person, happy and full of cheer.

As the days become weeks, my relationship with Farrah deepens. I’m like a schoolboy, calling her every day, telling her how desperately I love her. I’m forever bringing my darlin’ flowers, surprising her with little presents, spending long, lazy nights making love. This earth-daughter has touched me like no other woman before her. Our blissful romantic bubble will be punctured by reality soon enough, but for now, I’m luxuriating in every minute of this feeling.

I’m not the only one who’s been struck with Farrah fever. My sons Griffin, fourteen, and Patrick, twelve, adore her too. Griffin is Tatum’s younger brother from my first marriage, to Joanna Moore, and Patrick is from my second marriage, to Leigh Taylor-Young, both actresses. I get the boys every weekend. Patrick is serious and respectful. With Grif, you never feel that one day he’ll be a model citizen. He is already defying authority at every juncture, whether in school, on the playground, or with me. He has an angry wall around him that seems to become more impregnable every year.

I have a sauna at the beach house, and Farrah loves to take saunas. The boys start hiding under the bench in the hopes of getting a quick peek, but she’s always running so
late that by the time she finally gets into the sauna, they’ve been poached and have to be pulled out and doused with cold water. Farrah is always patient with them and kind. I’m especially pleased for Griffin, who can use all the attention and affection he can get. His and Tatum’s mother, actress Joanna Moore, has battled addiction and depression all her life, and it’s damaged the children.

I know it’s only a matter of time before I’ll have to face what I call the third-date conversation, which I’ve managed to avoid until now. You know what I’m talking about: that meaningful exchange every woman who’s starting to fall for a man inevitably initiates, in which she wants to know more about his exes and his children. Not my favorite subject, but at least I’m ready for it when Farrah finally asks. We’re curled up on the couch watching reruns of
Peyton Place
, and she shyly admits that she was a fan of the series and used to have a crush on me. I admit not so shyly that I saw a few episodes of
Charlie’s Angels
and entertained a thought or two of my own about her. “Tell me,” she says. I do and she actually blushes.

As we’re confessing to our mutual attractions, there’s a scene with Leigh Taylor-Young on
Peyton Place
. Farrah is watching in earnest, then turns to me and says, “How long did you know her before you were married?” I tell her it was only a few months. “Why so fast?” she asks. I decide to skip the details and get to the heart of the matter. “Because she was pregnant and I was still a good Irish Catholic boy under
the sway of his parents’ morality.” Farrah looks perplexed, then says, “But isn’t that the same thing that happened with Joanna Moore?”

“Pretty much,” I respond. “I felt responsible and I was too young to know any better. The difference with Joanna is that I wasn’t married to anybody else when we got together.”

“Do you mean you were still married to Joanna when you started to see Leigh?” she says.

“Technically, but the marriage was already over.” I’m trying to be honest here without incriminating myself.

“Did you love them?” she says.

“I did love Leigh and I tried to convince myself I loved Joanna.”

Fortunately, Farrah’s best instincts kick in.

“That must have been really hard for you,” she replies. “Knowing about your marriages makes me feel better about what happened with Lee, and now I get why you’ve been so understanding about him.” I say to myself,
That was easy
. Then, as if on cue, she says, “But what about the children? It must have been tough on them.” I take a deep breath and explain. “Patrick’s fine, and I think will stay that way. It’s been much more difficult for Tatum and Griffin, but now that she’s with me full-time and Grif is here on weekends, I know they’re going to be okay. And professionally, Tatum is already on her way and Griffin may be even more talented, so both could have big careers.” Farrah doesn’t press me, but I sense concern and a certain knowledge that we’re
going to have this conversation again. But in that moment, I really did feel confident about my children’s futures, especially now that Farrah had entered our lives. In all honesty, it did occur to me that there could be problems, but I swatted them away like gnats, not wanting to spoil the moment. Entire relationships are built on moments like these and I didn’t want to waste this one. Farrah takes my hand and holds it to her cheek. Then she says, “I’m here to help you. I’ve never been a mother. You may have to guide me.”

I tell myself this is a wonderful woman. Now my children and I can have both ends of the rainbow.

Though Farrah and I don’t flaunt our affection for each other in public, and by now Lee, who’s still in Canada, has acknowledged our union, we both know that soon the tabloids will start commenting, and we’re lucky it’s Liz Smith, the doyenne of New York celebrity gossip, who first reports on us in her column in New York’s
Daily News
. She calls it “a very real love affair,” and the item is tastefully written. I bet Sue Mengers fed it to her. That’s Sue, always working an angle. She probably figures the publicity will increase our price. The papers continue to follow us but the coverage is rarely hostile; in fact, the reporters keep referring to us as “handsome together,” and they repeatedly hint at a love affair, which it certainly is. The only real rough spot is a piece in
People
magazine that suggests what Farrah and I share together is tawdry and inappropriate, but we get through it. While part of me is bursting with pride that this fair-haired
goddess actually loves me, another part feels bad about all the publicity because it’s humiliating for Lee. Though I want nothing more than for each of us to be open about this love life of ours, and not let the world learn about it through the tabloids, it would be heartless for Farrah and me to rub it in Lee’s face by declaring publicly how much we love each other.

Reading these journal entries today, I marvel at my determinedly frivolous judgment. And to be fair, everything really did seem okay. I was in love and very, very distracted.

By now, Tatum is on her way home from Canada and all I’ve been hearing on the phone from her is how delighted she is that Farrah and I have found each other. Lee has never mentioned anything to her. She even hints that
we should marry if Farrah divorces Lee. So I decide to surprise my daughter and take Farrah with me to the airport to pick her up, thinking she’ll be thrilled. I’m wrong. After our telephone conversation, I’m surprised that Tatum seems uncomfortable, defensive. All of a sudden, it’s almost as if she’s the jealous other woman. I begin not to trust Tatum with Farrah. Tatum is too talkative around her. I had known a few women. Tatum had been around them. Some she liked, some she didn’t. Not that there were hundreds, but there were a few and I’m still friends with most of these women. It’s out of respect for them as well as for Farrah, who knew about my past, that I don’t feel comfortable discussing my previous relationships. For somebody who’s been the center of an avalanche of publicity for fifty years, I live an unusually private life, always have, and I’d be a traitor to one of my few guiding principles if I changed now. And so the next day I plead with Tatum, “Please, let’s not remind Farrah. Let me be this virgin that she’s found, let me keep the illusion alive just for a little while.” Tatum will have none of it. One day, several months after Tatum’s return, Farrah and I are in the car, and she points to a street corner we’re passing and says, “That’s where your daughter told me about you.”

“Oh, really, what did she say,” I reply, slightly sick to my stomach.

“How hard you are on women, that you’re not always a nice man, that I should be wary of you.”

These were the ways that Tatum, who was living with me, tried to undermine my love affair with Farrah. She couldn’t help it. She suspects mixed motives because everyone in her life has always had mixed motives.

I knew what was happening with Tatum: she was angry and confused. I just felt powerless to stop it. I was spending more time with Farrah than with her, and she saw it as a betrayal, that I was abandoning her. I adored Farrah, and felt I deserved this chance at happiness. In my defense, when Farrah came on the scene, Tatum was pretty independent, had her friends and her life, and didn’t need me like she did when she was a little girl. And so, to me, it didn’t seem that I was spoiling the situation. I was just happy with Farrah. Alas, the happier I was with Farrah, the less Tatum appreciated it. She believed I was withholding something from her and giving it to Farrah. Tatum and I still retained our daily routine. We’d run or take long walks on the beach. If either of us was up for a part, we’d read each other’s scripts. It was the evenings that were different. Tatum was no longer my regular dinner companion nor did she accompany me to parties. The evenings belonged to Farrah now. That was tricky for me, and I can’t say that I handled it particularly well. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know what to do to get over this hump. I had a habit of making molehills out of mountains. I had allowed my daughter to become too close to me and now I had somebody I wanted closer.

Farrah reacted in all the right ways, which moved me deeply because I suspected, even though she never said anything, that Tatum unnerved her, that she was afraid of her. Farrah was so loving and supportive, continually reassuring me, “It’s okay, we’ll see more of her.” She’d encourage me to bring Tatum with us to the movies, to dinner, anything to try to break through. Tatum turned sixteen on November 5, and we had her birthday party at Farrah’s, at the big house in the hills, and invited all her friends, including Michael Jackson, Melanie Griffith, and Andy Gibb, who was one of Tatum’s great crushes. I was upset when he died, so young and so mysteriously. As best I recall, at the party the kids kept listening to Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. They didn’t play pin the tail on the donkey or spin the bottle. But I saw the way Tatum was looking at Andy and I think they played something called “Truth or Dare,” a game I didn’t understand then and don’t now. The Diane Keaton look from
Annie Hall
made its appearance on two or three of the girls. The only thing I remember about the boys is that they all wanted to get close to Melanie.

I give my daughter not one but two cars—a brand-new BMW and a classic MG sports car. I had them brought to the front of the house. Each had an enormous ribbon with a bow tied around it. The entire party escorts Tatum outside. I expect an ordinary teen response from her, a squeal, a little jumping up and down, a big hug for her old man. Instead there’s nothing. She just looks at the cars and then at me. I
can’t tell whether she’s confused or disappointed. “Thanks, Dad,” she says as she turns and walks back into the house. By this point it’s clear I’m not going to able to console my daughter with fancy presents. The stronger Farrah believed in me, the less Tatum did. When I met Farrah, I felt that she was a godsend and that my only daughter would agree. It wasn’t fair assuming my daughter could think like an adult. I had treated Tatum as if she were a grown-up since she was nine, not a healthy approach to a child. Farrah can only enhance us, I thought then, which under normal circumstances should have been the case.

I now realize “normal” had long since been an impossibility for Tatum and me. I truly believe that if Tatum and I had not made
Paper Moon
, she would be dead, because she would have been with her mother and she wouldn’t have had the escape route that I gave her. She would have been a teenager in that erratic life with the worst of all adult behavior to imitate. First, I saved her, made her my whole world, and then I pushed her out.

I remember once, out of frustration, actually trying to explain to Tatum: “You’re asking me to choose the girl I don’t sleep with. You can’t ask that of a man. You’re missing one of the chief ingredients of a relationship. I love you, you’re my daughter, but there are certain aspects of my life you cannot fulfill.” The words came tumbling out of my mouth before I realized what I’d said. I’d inadvertently complicated our relationship. It was utterly inexcusable. I was blinded by love and
in my naïveté I expected my child to sympathize with me. I kept telling myself that everything was going to be okay, that we could step blindly into that blue yonder of the faultless American family. Except there was already too much spoiled fruit on the family tree.

My mother saw what was happening and understood I would have to leave Farrah to get Tatum back. My mother didn’t want to say that. She also knew I wouldn’t do it. Both my parents did. My dad, Blackie O’Neal, was a well-known screenwriter and my mom, Patricia, a respected if occasional actress. They were familiar with the impermanence of Hollywood relationships. They knew my first two wives, and saw Farrah as an oasis of calm and responsibility. They also realized that the more I fell in love with her, the more Tatum would retreat. It might have been different had I enforced healthier boundaries beginning with the filming of
Paper Moon
, where father and daughter were equal partners, but we acted like adult friends, and it would prove our undoing.